Everything tagged "China"

Jan Wesselingh was an employee of Netherlands Harbour Works Co. from Amsterdam, working in Guangzhou (Canton) before WWII and in Hong Kong after WWII. I was brought in contact with two of his sons by Theodor A.R. Strauss, 1988-1993 secretary of Nederlandse Reünisten Vereniging China (NRCV, Dutch Reunists Association China), of which Jan Wesselingh was a member.

According to tradition, this bronze bowl was found during dredging works by Netherlands Harbour Works Co. in Xiamen in 1938. The bowl has a flat surface and lettering or symbols at the bottom (3 photos). <Read more ...>

Jan Wesselingh was an employee of Netherlands Harbour Works Co. from Amsterdam, working in Guangzhou (Canton) before WWII and in Hong Kong after WWII. I was brought in contact with two of his sons by Theodor A.R. Strauss, 1988-1993 secretary of Nederlandse Reünisten Vereniging China (NRCV, Dutch Reunists Association China), of which Jan Wesselingh was a member.

According to tradition, this bronze bowl was found during dredging works by Netherlands Harbour Works Co. in Xiamen in 1938. The bowl has a flat surface and lettering or symbols at the bottom (3 photos). <Read more ...>

Even though HCHC was taken over by Internatio in 1948, people kept referring to the company as Holland-China Trading Company. This group photo was taken for the occasion of senior manager Philip Harding Klimanek (front row, sixth from the left) leaving the company. Charles Gesner van der Voort can be found front row, first from the left, his wife Nancy third from the left. Phil Beekmeijer and his wife Ans are third row, first and second from the left.
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Philip Harding Klimanek (1883-1965) was born in the Czech Republic, at the time his place of birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In ca. 1905 he started to work for Holland-China Trading Company, in Hong Kong.

In 1939, when Charles Gesner van der Voort arrived in Shanghai to work for the company, he was Charles' superior. In a letter home he wrote: "Played chess with Klimanek in the French Club" [translation Pieter Lommerse, the French Club was Le Cercle Sportif Français, a fashionable place to be in the 1930s and it still exists today]. <Read more ...>